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FirstEnergy blames its business decisions on clean air rules

(Washington,
DC – February 8, 2012) – Environmental
Defense Fund (EDF) criticized FirstEnergy, today, for blaming its decision
to close old coal-fired power plants on the Clean Air Act rules that will
protect Americans from mercury, acid gases and other toxic air pollution.

FirstEnergy
announced today that it will close three old plants in West Virginia. EDF
sharply disputed its claim that EPA regulations make the closures necessary.

“These
plants are closing because they’re old and inefficient, and because they are
facing competition from natural gas -- not because of clean air regulations,”
said Mark MacLeod of EDF.
“The fact is these plants were built when Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and
Eisenhower were in office.”

Many
utilities are making a business decision to shut down aging and inefficient
coal plants – and clean air rules are only the smallest part of the story.

EDF
outlines the main reasons for these business decisions on a new fact
sheet. They include:

Age
– 59% of America’s coal fired power plants are over 40 years old, with
many over 60 years old. In
this case, the three plants FirstEnergy will close were built between 1943
(while we were still fighting World War II) and 1960. According
to former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, “In 1970, the [Clean Air
Act] required that new sources meet tight emissions standards. At that
time, it was assumed that electrical utility units had an average lifetime
of 30 years.”

Low utilization
–the older units are often small, inefficient, and operated only part-time.
From a business perspective, it is not cost effective to keep paying the
fixed costs needed to maintain them for limited operation. Energy
efficiency and demand response programs are far more efficient ways of
meeting these energy needs. In its press
release, First Energy itself points out that, “these plants served
mostly as peaking facilities, generating, on average, less than 1 percent
of the electricity produced by FirstEnergy over the past three years.”

Health and the Environment – it is not surprising that these old, inefficient
power plants are also disproportionately higher emitters of pollutants,
and often have not had modern pollution control equipment installed.

First
Energy recently announce the retirement of six other coal-fired power plants in
Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland; it also blamed those closures on EPA
regulations. Undercutting that assertion is the fact that the compliance
deadline for new EPA rules is 2015, with possible extensions to 2017.
FirstEnergy will retire its plants by September 1, 2012.

What’s
more, FirstEnergy announced a decision to switch some of those six units from
full-time to seasonal operation, and to temporarily mothball others, more than
16 months ago -- before EPA even issued its proposal
for the new rule.

“Many
factors contribute to the new utility investment cycle,” said MacLeod. “Don’t
let plant owners use health protections as a scapegoat for retirements.”